The city of Portland, Oregon, has a population of 584,000 people. It is the county seat of Multnomah County, which has 735,000 people. The Portland metro area (which includes part of the state of Washington) has almost 2.3 million people. The Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland (ASAP) is a coalition of six organizations, some of which are municipal and some private, that provide animal sheltering in the Portland metro area. The municipal members of the coalition (shelters that are responsible for stray intake) are Multnomah County Animal Services (MCAS) (serving the city of Portland and Multnomah County), the Bonnie L. Hays Shelter (BLH) (serving Washington County), and Clackamas County Dog Services. The private members of the coalition are the Oregon Humane Society, the Humane Society for Southwest Washington (HSSW) (which works with Clark County Animal Control), and the Cat Adoption Team. Together these six organizations serve four counties — Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, and Clark — containing about 2 million people. ASAP estimates that its six members care for 90% of the animals needing sheltering in the four counties. Coalitions such as ASAP are becoming a trend, as more and more municipal shelters seek out and work closely with private partners. In such situations you have to look at the community coalition as a whole, rather than the individual shelters, to get an accurate idea of what is going on. For example, the Clackamas County municipal shelter does not pick up stray cats and does not accept owner surrendered cats, but it offers cats for adoption that have been taken in by other area organizations. Conversely, the Cat Adoption Team takes in cats but not dogs. MCAS and BLH accept owner surrenders only when they have room, but owner surrenders are accepted by HSSW and OHS. The ASAP coalition increased the live release rate for the metro area from 62% in 2006 to 79% in 2011. Maddie’s Fund reported that the coalition had an 85% live release rate for 2012, with a combined intake of almost 32,000 animals. The coalition’s live release rate first exceeded 90% in 2013, with a live release rate of 91% for an intake of just over 30,000 animals. If owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 86% for 2013. (The ASAP statistics are linked here.) With ASAP’s service area of about 2 million people, it was the largest metro area in 2013 to report a 90% or better live release rate under the standard calculation. Multnomah County’s live release rate for 2013, calculated separately on MCAS intake alone, was 87%. It is not unusual, when you have a coalition, for a shelter that does animal control intake to have a lower live release rate than other intake shelters in the coalition, since animal control generally involves the most difficult situations such as hoarders, dog-fighting busts, etc. When other shelters in the area of the animal control shelter are doing intake of owner surrenders, it can artificially depress the success rate of the animal control shelter. In 2014, Both MCAS and the coalition as a whole improved their live release rates (the full coalition Asilomar statistics are not posted as of this writing.) MCAS has reported 90.2% for 2014, and ASAP as a whole has reported a 93% live release rate for 2014 (see header in link). The Portland metro area is counted in the blog’s running totals as a 90%+ community.

There’s an article about Target Zero (TZ) in the most recent issue of Animal Sheltering (the HSUS magazine). The article has a pretty good discussion of how TZ developed its program and how it has been implemented in Waco and Baton Rouge. It got me thinking about the different ways that No Kill programs can be implemented. First of all, I should state at the outset of this discussion that I disagree with one of TZ’s basic premises, which is that reducing intake is more important than increasing live releases. I think they are both equally important. The article states that TZ has relied on Peter Marsh’s research for the conclusion that reducing intake matters more. I’ve read Peter Marsh’s research, and as far as I can see it relies entirely on data from traditional shelters — shelters that have low live release rates. With shelters like that, it’s true that the only thing that lowers shelter killing is lowering intake, but the reason for that is that those shelters do not have modern, marketing-based adoption programs. So of course their adoption rates aren’t going to be very high. Yet TZ has used Marsh’s research to justify putting adoptions low on its priority scale. But it’s possible that Marsh’s approach will work well in some cities — cities like Waco and Baton Rouge. The methods for reducing intake (as opposed to increasing live releases) tend to be low tech — things like TNR, having appointments for surrender, charging a surrender fee, targeted spay-neuter programs, returning animals in the field, updating city ordinances, etc. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recruit veterinarians or manage any of those things. Methods for increasing live releases, on the other hand, tend to require creativity and marketing and people skills. Having a successful mega-adoption event is not easy (I know this from personal experience, it’s amazing all the different skills needed). Implementing an effective shelter marketing program takes just as much skill, in my opinion, as directing a political campaign or running a big disaster-relief program. Not a place for amateurs. One of the sticking points for getting to No Kill in many, many places has been leadership. We see it happen over and over again that a city or county hires a new shelter director, hopeful that the director will take the local shelter to No Kill, but it doesn’t happen. To implement all the programs that will both decrease intake and increase live releases requires a lot of particular skills, and it may be that there just aren’t that many people who are in the market to be shelter directors who have that particular skill set. So, getting back to TZ, I’m wondering if they have hit upon something, which is that if you are in a city with a high-intake, high-kill shelter and shelter leadership that is willing but does not fall into that small category of people who have the skill set to be No Kill rock stars, perhaps the best thing you can do is to pick the low-hanging fruit. Get intake down by the easy methods that anyone could do, start the city and the shelter on the road to success. As they get the intake under control they will be inspired to start working on the harder stuff such as a neonatal foster program and mega-adoption events. Yes it’s very tempting to say the city should just fire the current director and somehow find a No Kill rock star, but in a lot of cities that’s just not going to happen, and meanwhile time goes by and animals keep dying. Another important point is that there may still be places in the country where there is a lot to be gained from increasing spay-neuter programs. The average spay-neuter rate for owned pets in the United States is 85% or more, which means there must be a lot of communities where we’ve pretty much maxed out the benefits to be had from low-cost spay neuter. There must be lots of communities where people have gotten the message and they are very responsibly spaying and neutering their pets. But in some places with high intake, there still might be a lot to be gained from spay-neuter. If that’s the case, then it makes sense to push spay-neuter as one of your initial programs, because it’s easy to implement and easy to fund in most instances. TZ seems to be tailoring its program recommendations to the different situations in the different cities it works with. In Huntsville, for example, it helped the shelter put on a mega-adoption event that was very successful. Rick DuCharme, who is a senior consultant to TZ along with Marsh, has put on many successful mega-adoption events in Jacksonville, so it’s not like TZ doesn’t have the skills on board to advise about adoptions. Finally, TZ seems to emphasize collaboration. This is a hot-button issue with some No Kill advocates, who believe that collaboration just slows things down. Again, though, perhaps there are are places where collaboration is the fastest way to get to the goal. I’m still very much on the fence on the issue of whether TZ is on the right track or not. I still disagree with the conclusions Marsh draws from his research. But I believe the TZ approach is something that bears thinking about and discussion. Maybe the TZ program isn’t right for every city — certainly Kansas City Pet Project proved that it’s possible to implement intake reduction and live-release-increasing programs at the same time and do it very successfully. But it might be that one-size-fits-all isn’t a good approach, and that the TZ methods have a place in cities and counties that are starting with very little.

Rio Blanco County is located in the northwestern part of Colorado on the Utah border. The 2010 census counted 6700 county residents, including the towns of Rangely (population 2400) and Meeker (2500). The County has two animal shelters, one serving Rangely and the other serving Meeker. Both shelters also accept animals picked up by the sheriff in unincorporated areas of the county. The Rangely Animal Shelter (RAS) is a municipal agency that handles animal control and sheltering for Rangely. Animals are vaccinated, neutered, and microchipped before being adopted. The RAS manager told me that they have a small, waivable fee for owner surrenders and will either take them in immediately or help the owner place the pet. They have a TNR program and they adopt out kittens born to feral mothers. The statistics submitted to the state by RAS for 2012 show a live release rate of 99%. The live release rate does not change if the one animal who died in shelter care in 2012 is included with euthanasias. In 2013, RAS took in 313 animals and had a 99.7% live release rate. The live release rate was 99.3% if the one animal who died in shelter care is included with euthanasias. The Meeker Animal Shelter (MAS) is also a municipal agency that provides animal control as well as sheltering. I spoke to the animal control officer, who told me that although MAS does not impound cats, she will respond to calls about sick or injured cats and take them to a local veterinarian. MAS accepts owner surrenders subject, at times, to a monitored waiting list. A rescue in Meeker called the Cat Coalition does TNR in the area. MAS took in 107 dogs in 2012 and had a 99% live release rate. The shelter took in 115 dogs in 2013 with a live release rate of 100%. No animals died or were lost in shelter care in 2013. Rio Blanco County was originally listed by this blog on December 9, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Montmorency County, Michigan, is located in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has about 10,000 residents. Up until 2009, the county sheriff’s office handled animal control. The Elk Country Animal Shelter (ECAS) is a 501(c)(3) organization that supported the county shelter for years and finally took it over entirely in April 2009. Animals were kept in outdoor kennels at the sheriffs office and ECAS’s first order of business was to create a shelter building where the animals could be indoors. The shelter lists owner surrenders as a service it provides and does not list any restrictions on surrenders on its website. Here are the live release rates for the county as reported to the state of Michigan for the five years since ECAS took over the shelter: 2009 — 97% 2010 — 97% 2011 — 97% 2012 — 97% 2013 — 92% The Elk Country shelter had to deal with a hoarding/cruelty situation early in 2013 where the shelter wound up taking in close to 40 dogs. Since Elk Country is a very small shelter, the 40 dogs represented a substantial part of its dog intake for the year. The shelter’s mission was endangered in 2012 when a contract dispute with the county caused ECAS to stop formally taking in strays. Volunteers for the shelter went out on their own time and rescued strays and took them to a neighboring shelter. Fortunately the dispute only lasted a couple of weeks, and on April 11, 2012 the county approved the funding asked for by the shelter. The shelter provides for much of its income by its own fundraising. Montmorency County, MI, was originally listed by this blog on May 17, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Grosse Ile Township consists of a large island and several smaller islands adjacent to Detroit. The area has about 10,000 residents. The Animals’ Island League Shelter (T.A.I.L.S.) is a private non-profit that partners with the township for animal sheltering. The shelter’s website states: “Although the Animal Shelter is owned and operated by the Township, we, as stewards of the Grosse Ile Animal Shelter, are dedicated to providing the additional financial support needed to make our homeless animal friends happy, healthy, and adoptable.” The shelter’s website describes its operations as follows: “The Grosse Ile Animal Shelter houses stray animals picked up by Animal Control and those turned in by Grosse Ile residents only. Stray animals must be picked up by Animal Control at your residence or the location where the stray animal was found. We are not able to house surrendered animals from other communities.” The website does not mention any restriction on owner surrenders other than community residency. Michigan shelters report their statistics to the state. In 2010, the shelter reported a live release rate of 94%, and in 2011 it reported 91%. The reported live release rate improved to 95% in 2012. Grosse Ile, MI, is listed in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

[NOTE: The Worth Watching category lists communities whose animal shelter systems are doing substantially better than average, but have not reported a sustained (for one year or more) 90%+ live release rate. These communities are not counted in the running total of 90%+ communities. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] St. Paul, Minnesota (population 295,000) lies alongside the city of Minneapolis (population 400,000), and the two are known as the Twin Cities. The Twin Cities metro area has 3.8 million people. St. Paul has a municipal department that operates the city’s Animal Control Center (ACC). Molly Lunaris took over as director of the ACC in the fall of 2013. I spoke to her yesterday about the ACC, and she sent me statistics from 2013 and 2014. She told me that the ACC accepts owner surrenders as well as strays, and the only requirement is that a person surrendering an animal must be a St. Paul resident. In 2013 the ACC’s live release rate for the year was 61%. So far in 2014 it has improved substantially, with an 81% live release rate through September. The shelter offers owner-requested euthanasia, and with owner-requested euthanasia and deaths in shelter care counted as part of euthanasias, the live release rate is 74% so far in 2014. The ACC does very few adoptions, and returns most of its animals to their owners or transfers them to approved 501(c)(3) rescues. Their intake is quite small relative to the city’s population (1541 dogs and cats in 2013, which is 5 per 1000 people). St. Paul is one of those situations where the city shelter’s performance is perhaps better than it looks on paper, for a couple of reasons. First, they may be receiving a higher proportion of the city’s hard-to-place animals, because they have a large non-profit in the city that also does intake. The private Animal Humane Society, which describes itself as “open admission,” has several locations including one in St. Paul. According to their website they take in owner surrenders and some strays. Often in a situation like this with a large private shelter doing intake, the city shelter winds up with a higher percentage of problem cases (such as seizures and hoarding cases) simply because they are the organization that gets the animal control calls. The second reason that the ACC’s performance may be better than it looks on paper is that the shelter is doing several things to divert intake. For instance, animal control officers are following the latest recommendations of No Kill shelter experts by not picking up stray cats unless they need help. The ACC also makes efforts to return animals in the  field, which can reduce intake. I do not have combined numbers for the ACC and the Animal Humane Society, but it look as though their combined live release rate would be about 85% so far in 2014. With kitten season finished, it’s possible that the combined live release rate could reach 90% for 2014 as a whole.

Nelson County, Virginia, is a rural county midway between Charlottesville and Lynchburg. The population is about 15,000. Nelson County Animal Control (NCAC) is the municipal agency that takes in strays and owner surrenders for the county. In November 2012, a new animal control director with a background in management took over. The new director stated in a January 2013 interview that euthanasia is generally performed only on animals who are aggressive or sick. The Humane Society/SPCA of Nelson County (HSNC) is a private agency that pulls animals from NCAC and has an adoption center. In an article about its medical fund, HSNC reported that it takes in about 1000 animals per year. HSNC also accepts owner surrenders, but only if they have space and evaluate the animal as adoptable. In addition to its adoption center, HSNC uses transports to rescues to place animals. I confirmed in a phone call to HSNC that all transfers are to No Kill organizations.  HSNC has a stated goal for the county of ensuring that “no healthy, non-aggressive animal is euthanized.” NCAC and HSNC both report to the Virginia state database. In 2014, the combined live release rate for both NCAC and HSNC was 92% (88% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted as euthanasias). This number probably understates the actual live release rate because I did not count any transfers from NCAC as live releases. The purpose of this was to avoid double counting of live releases since the majority of the transfers went to HSNC. In 2013 and 2012 the combined live release rates for NCAC and HSNC were in the 80th percentile. Nelson County has a very high intake of dogs and cats. The combined total intake of NCAC and HSNC for 2014, not counting transfers from NCAC, was 1386, which is 92 animals for every 1000 people in the community. Average intake for the US as a whole is thought to be from 15 to 30 animals per 1000 people. Nelson County, Virginia, is counted in the blog’s Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

[Dear Readers – This is the first in a series of occasional posts on shelter data. Not statistics on individual shelters, but more general things such as how to calculate success rates, how adoption rates have changed over time, and, today’s topic, the number of animal shelters in the United States. I get so many requests from people for this kind of data that it seems as though there is really a need for it, and it can be hard to find. I will collect these posts – and a few older posts on data topics – in a “Shelter Data” tab in the blog’s header.] Did you ever wonder how many public shelters there are in the United States? By “public shelter” I mean a shelter that is charged with impounding strays and other animals taken in by animal control, and usually takes in owner surrenders as well. A public shelter may be run by a city or county government, or the government may contract with a private entity to run the shelter. The surprising fact is that no one seems to know for sure how many of these shelters exist in the United States. One estimate often cited is about 5000 shelters. This estimate was made by the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy for surveys they did in the 1990s, but about 1/4th of the shelters included were private. In 1999 HSUS developed a list of about 3500 shelters, although some of these were duplicates. Today we usually hear one or the other of these figures cited as the number of public shelters in the United States. The 3500 figure correlates pretty well with the number of counties in the United States plus the larger cities. We have 3144 counties in the United States according to the United States Census Bureau. The National League of Cities, using a slightly older census, has identified 3033 counties that have governments. There are about 300 cities in the United States with 100,000 or more people, and another 362 cities with a population of 50,000 to 100,000. If you reduce the number of counties slightly to account for the few counties that have no animal shelter, you could derive an estimate of about 3500 for all counties, plus cities of 50,000 or more. This estimate of 3500 is probably good if you don’t mind missing small shelters, but it may be too low if you want to capture all public shelters. The National League puts the total number of city/town governments in the United States at 19,492 (this does not count townships or special districts). If we subtract the 662 cities of 50,000 population or more, that leaves 18,830 small jurisdictions that could potentially have small shelters. Many of these jurisdictions (probably the great majority of them) do not have their own public shelters because they are served by a larger nearby jurisdiction, but some of them do have small community shelters. Thus, the estimate of 5000 shelters in the United States may be closer to the mark if you want to cover all public shelters. But as you can see, both the 3500 and the 5000 estimates have a wide potential margin of error. Is there any easy way to get an actual count or a better estimate of the number of public shelters in the United States? One way to get a better estimate might be to look at states that have reporting requirements for public shelters. There are several states, including Colorado, Michigan, California, North Carolina, and Virginia that require public shelters to report to the state each year. In theory one could figure out the number of public shelters in all of those states and then extrapolate to the United States population. In practice, this would be time consuming because many private shelters and rescues are also subject to reporting requirements, so a lot of research would be involved to sort out the public shelters. Plus, there is no guarantee that states that require reporting are representative of the other states. Another way might be to find out from the makers of the various shelter software programs how many shelters use each program, and add them up – or to count the shelters on Petfinder. The problem is that, as with the state databases, there are a great many private shelters that use shelter software, and a great many private shelters and rescues that use Petfinder. There is no easy way to separate out the public shelters from the rest. One could make an actual count by looking at every county and every city and town, but with over 20,000 of those jurisdictions in the United States it would be an enormous task. Each community would have to be researched to find out if it has a public shelter. In many communities telephone calls would have to be made to determine where strays and owner surrenders from the jurisdiction are sheltered, because the information is often not easily accessible online. And even if we could derive an exact number and create a list of public shelters it would be something of a moving target, since governments frequently change their animal sheltering arrangements. Another problem would be how to account for large private shelters that voluntarily take in owner surrenders from the public but do not take in strays and do not have any contract with a city or county. These large humane societies might take in half or more of the homeless animals in their jurisdiction, even though they are not municipal shelters and do not contract with the local government for animal sheltering. Why is it important for us to know the number of public shelters? If we want to measure how we are doing in the United States at saving the lives of homeless animals, we have to know how many homeless animals there are each year and what happens to them. If we look at all shelters, both public and private, then we have a lot of transfers of animals from one shelter to another, making it difficult or impossible to know how many animals we are dealing with. What we need to know is the number of animals impounded by animal control plus the number of owner surrenders in each jurisdiction, and that means limiting our inquiry to those public shelters that have animal control duties, plus any private shelters in the community that take in significant numbers of owner surrenders directly from the public (since they are serving a public function). Without that data we will never know for sure how we are doing. I think if we are ever going to be able to have accurate, up-to-date counts of animals coming into shelters in the United States we may need to rely on private organizations doing counts on a state-by-state basis. The Michigan Pet Fund Alliance has a project of this sort, where they list shelters each year by category. They have a head start on this project because Michigan is one of the states that requires shelters to report, but they have also invested the time to determine if each shelter is public or private and how it handles admissions. The shelter federation in New Hampshire records data for the state’s public shelters, although they make only aggregate data available and not the data from each shelter. Best Friends could probably tell us how many public shelters are in Utah and their intake and disposition of animals. State alliances and organizations are ideally suited to simplify the task of identifying public shelters, because coalitions of people who work on sheltering within a state will have a great deal of knowledge about local situations starting out and will need to spend much less time on research than an outsider would. Perhaps one of these days one of the big national organizations will offer grants to state alliances to collect such data in a standard format and make it available. State alliances that would pitch in and do this task, especially where combined with state reporting systems, could quickly solve our data-collection problem and give us valuable information about how we are doing nationwide at shelter lifesaving.

The Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) has removed its draft statement on No-Kill terminology, which was in a comment period. Thank you ASV for listening to people’s concerns. PetSmart Charities has issued an in-depth report on how San Antonio went from killing 90% of shelter animals 10 years ago to saving almost 90% today. The turnaround happened in several steps, including a planned effort to get all the animal welfare organizations working together, removing legal barriers to TNR, finding high-volume rescue partners, establishment of an adoption center, and massive spay-neuter efforts for owned pets. San Antonio was one of the few cities that in 2005, ten years ago, still had a serious problem of permanently homeless dogs roaming the streets, not to mention lots of community cats. Thanks to spay-neuter and TNR, the populations of free-roaming cats and dogs are down. Still, the San Antonio organizations handle a lot of animals – adopting over 24,000 cats and dogs and transferring more than 13,000 a year. The community also spays or neuters 58,000 dogs and cats per year. An important part of the story has been funding, which has come in part from the San Antonio Area Foundation, Best Friends, and PetSmart Charities. San Antonio is an amazing No Kill success story, and kudos to PetSmart Charities for providing this analysis. The Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce Counties, in Takoma, Washington, wants to change the image of free-roaming cats. Instead of calling them “feral” they have moved to using the term “community” to describe free-roaming cats. They hope this change will help people realize that not all free-roaming cats are wild. The humane society is also trying to change the reputation of stray cats, stressing that they control rodent population. In addition to the new image for community cats, the shelter has a TNR program for them that has resulted in decreased intake. In Pima County, Arizona, the local No Kill group is partnering with the shelter to get special-needs animals adopted. No Kill Pima County, in collaboration with the shelter, has created a website to feature adoptable animals who might otherwise get overlooked because they are older or have handicaps. Hank’s Flights, a volunteer-pilot transport group based in Montgomery County, Texas, has transported 183 dogs and 20 cats since it started up in October 2014. Hank’s Flights is run by two families, and the pilots are brothers Howard and George Turek. They also volunteer with an organization that provides air transport for veterans. More good news from Baton Rouge, where the Companion Animal Alliance is continuing its efforts to make the city No Kill. Local rescue groups have stepped up their efforts to recruit fosters for animals at the city shelter, and it has paid off with 245 dogs and 86 cats going into their foster programs in the first quarter of 2015. One foster family has provided a temporary home for 15 dogs in the past year. The Stockton, California shelter continued its effort to reduce shelter killing recently with a free adoption Sunday. The Stockton shelter is running at a 79% live release rate for the first 6 months of 2015, compared to 75% for all of 2014 and 50% for all of 2013. The big improvement from 2013 to 2014 was primarily due to support from the San Francisco SPCA. Since the first 6 months of the year includes the worst part of kitten season, it is possible that the Stockton shelter will be over 80% for the year. Intake for the first 6 months of 2015 was 5,643 dogs and cats. A new director, Phillip Zimmerman, started at the shelter in January. The board of the tiny Alger County Animal Shelter, which is No Kill, unexpectedly fired director Kathy Glish recently, and some local residents are not happy. All but one board member of the shelter resigned after the backlash to the firing, so perhaps a reconciliation is still possible. Here is a nice feature about the Palm Springs Animal Shelter, and their turnaround from saving under 50% of intake four years ago to over 95% today. The key has been a public-private partnership between the city and the Friends of the Palm Springs Animal Shelter. NBC and Telemundo are hosting a Clear The Shelters day on August 15th. Quite a few large cities are participating, including over 30 local shelters in the Chicago area and over 40 shelters in the San Francisco Bay area.

The big news this week is that Richard Avanzino is stepping down as president of Maddie’s Fund in June. Avanzino is often called the father of No Kill. Individual No Kill shelters have been around since 1884, but Avanzino started the No Kill communities movement back in the 1970s and 1980s with his innovations at the San Francisco SPCA, which led to the historic Adoption Pact in 1994. He went to Maddie’s Fund in 1999. His retirement will mark the end of an era. The Beagle Freedom Project is getting publicity for its efforts to get dogs used in scientific experiments out of laboratories and into homes, including a bill in Nevada requiring laboratories to put dogs up for adoption instead of killing them. Although the number of dogs used in labs is far smaller today than it used to be, there are still a significant number. Beagles are the most common “purpose-bred” dog used in experiments. Purpose-bred dogs rescued from laboratories are similar to puppy mill dogs in their lack of experience living in a home environment. In transport news, large black dogs are going from Miami, where they are hard to adopt, to Iowa, where large dogs are in great demand. And Front Street in Sacramento is sending dogs by private plane to Idaho. HSUS has a new page on its website that collects the science proving that breed-specific legislation is misguided. The page makes note of the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendation that breed not be considered in formulating dog-bite prevention policy. The CDC has more expertise and credibility than any other organization in the United States on matters of epidemiology, so their conclusion that dog breed is not a relevant factor in dog bites deserves serious attention. The HSUS page also quotes the American Veterinary Medical Association for the proposition that dog bite statistics “do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite,” citing factors such as the failure to correct those statistics for the relative population of each breed. In other BSL news, a bill has been introduced in the Michigan senate to ban BSL. The Tree House Humane Society in Chicago will include a cat cafe with its new facility. It will be the first cat cafe in Chicago. Madrid, the capital of Spain, has reportedly passed a bill making it illegal to kill stray animals in the city. The Chester County SPCA, which serves Chester and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania, says it has saved over 90% of its animals in each of the last four months. The shelter has just received a grant of $305,000 from PetSmart Charities to start a community-cat program that can help 4700 cats over the next 26 months. Maddie’s Fund is presenting a 5-part series of free webcasts, with Q&A sessions, on the Million Cat Challenge. It’s on five Tuesdays, starting April 7 at 9 PM EST. The presenters include Wally Stem from Waco, a city which has been making amazing strides lately. He is a city-management expert who will talk about alternatives to impoundment. Barbara Carr and Kathie Johnson will speak on the crucial topic of managed admission. Scott Trebatoski, who managed the city shelter in Jacksonville as it transitioned to No Kill and is now the shelter director in Tampa, will speak on one of the newest ideas, return-to-field. Kathleen Olsen and Ollie Davidson will speak about how to make big improvements in outcome by knowing your shelter’s capacity and how to manage it. Dr. Cynthia Delany and Kelly Lee will talk about removing barriers to adoption, including less-intrusive matchmaking. The governor of Virginia has signed the bill modifying the state’s definition of “private animal shelter.” Supporters of the new law are hopeful that the change will force PETA to shut down its slaughterhouse “shelter.” The voters in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, approved a measure last November to allow the county to borrow up to $3.79 million to build a new shelter. However, some county officials are now trying to derail the project, arguing that the proposed new shelter is too fancy. Lynchburg, Virginia’s new shelter is open. One of the features is an outdoor cat room which is “similar to a screened-in porch with pillowed benches.” Lynchburg is not far from Spotsylvania. Perhaps the Spotsylvania County officials could tour the new Lynchburg shelter and learn how proper housing is important for disease control and the mental health and ultimate successful placement of shelter animals. We keep hearing that the state of Maine is No Kill, but the trouble is in finding stats. In this interview, the incoming director of a Maine shelter says that shelters in the state do not have to kill animals based on capacity. In fact, they import animals from out of state. He attributes the state’s success to its people, who take good care of their pets, and a tax on pet food that is used to provide low-cost spay-neuter services.

Lane County is located in western Oregon and has close to 352,000 residents. It contains the cities of Eugene (156,000 residents) and Springfield (60,000 residents). Lane County Animal Services (LCAS) was a municipal shelter that served Lane County, Eugene and Springfield until 2012, when county officials put animal sheltering up for bid. Greenhill Humane Society, the only bidder, was granted the contract and took over the LCAS shelter on July 1, 2012. Currently, Greenhill runs two shelters — the former LCAS shelter on 1st Avenue in Eugene, which takes in all strays from animal control officers in Lane County, Eugene, and Springfield, and the original Greenhill shelter on Green Hill Road which takes in owner surrenders. Greenhill requires an appointment and a fee ($10 to $100) for owner surrenders, and I confirmed with the shelter that it has a waiting list for cats and generally does not accept aggressive dogs as owner surrenders. Eugene animal control officers do not impound feral cats, and Greenhill has a Trap-Neuter-Return program for feral cats in the county. The shelter states its euthanasia policy for the dual shelters as follows: “Greenhill euthanizes only in situations involving animals that cannot be safely handled – either because of aggression or contagious disease, or where the animal is suffering and a reasonable level of treatment would not be effective at improving quality of life.” LCAS was doing well before the Greenhill takeover, and reported a 94% live release rate for dogs and 88% for cats in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. When Greenhill took over, the city of Eugene began posting monthly statistics on the city website for the 1st Avenue shelter. Full statistics are posted on the Greenhill website for each fiscal year and are current through June 30, 2014. The live release rate for fiscal year 2013-2014 was 92%, with intake of 2907 animals. The live release rate for fiscal year 2012-2013 was 89% with intake of 3290 dogs and cats. Lane County is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Ocean City is a resort town located in Cape May County, near the southern tip of New Jersey. The town has 12,000 year-round residents, but in the summer the population swells to as much as 130,000 people with an influx of visitors and part-time residents. The Humane Society of Ocean City (HSOC), a private non-profit, provides animal control and sheltering for Ocean City. The shelter accepts owner surrenders by appointment, and I was told in a telephone call to the shelter that it has a waiting list. HSOC has a full-service veterinary clinic that provides low-cost care by appointment. The shelter also offers an “Affordable Spay/Neuter Clinic.” Public shelters in New Jersey report to the state’s Department of Health, which provides an annual county-by-county summary. A shelter’s individual report may be obtained by request from the state. The report for calendar year 2012 for HSOC shows that the shelter did very well, with a 97% live release rate. Intake was 179 animals, including 82 owner surrenders and 74 strays. The shelter reported that no animals died or were lost in shelter care. The shelter did not report any owner-requested euthanasias. In 2013, intake was 194 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 99%. Ocean City, NJ, was originally listed by this blog on October 3, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.